Taking Leave
by GirlonaBridge
Summary: A little fantasy - somewhere post series 5. If Harry had taken leave, had gone travelling in Europe. If he had happened to bump into a certain someone. I know this wouldn't, didn't, couldn't happen, but if it had...


It is the seventh day, in the third town on the island, when he sees her. At a moment so calm and fresh sun-polished that he has almost forgotten that he is looking for her. The stones of the square are whitened by the early morning light. The day is not yet hot but the sun is warming his back as he sits in the corner of the old bench where probably old men have sat each morning for sixty years. Not that he is old. And a morning like this can make him forget that he had ever begun to believe he was. He could forget anything, watching the light fall through the columns; the pigeons shifting in formation along the cracked slabs; children scattering at a run, doubling back to chase each other; shrieks that only end in laughter; men setting up market stalls, moving slowly; the birds rising with a subdued clatter into the dazzling sky.

He could forget anything, he thinks.

Then he sees her.

She still walks the same,- short swift strides, holding her bag close. He sits up straighter, follows her with only his eyes. Her hair swings over her face, her long skirt catches her leg, then she is silhouetted against the white wall. He watches her walk the length of one empty side of the square, flickering between the pillars, then stop at the first stall. He sees her looking over the produce, chatting with the stall-tender. He imagines the smile that she gives him when she holds out the money. His chest aches.

She is looking over the oranges, debating whether it is worth paying so much for the first of the new season, when she feels someone behind her. An old instinct prevents her from turning. A thread of feeling she can't put a name to thrills through her. It's a feeling and an instinct that belongs to another life, another person. It has no place in this moment, she tells herself. But still she does not turn and she cannot believe, in all innocence, that this is just a coincidence, just a man standing too close to a woman for his own pleasure. Her senses sharpen. Whoever he is, he is wearing a light linen suit, a little crumpled. The shape of the shadow suggests a hat, so probably white European, older man by the style. No one she knows here. She picks an orange, weighs it in her hand. Deciding. She could be overreacting but she doesn't like being played with, however innocently.

'A little too early,' she says in Greek, without looking round. 'They will be better when they are ripe.'

It is probably too clever for any old tourist picking on a lone woman, making all the usual assumptions about her, but it gives her a bite of satisfaction to be clever and subtle and sharp. Until the reply in English – that voice.

'Oh, I don't know. It could be the perfect time.'

The words are deceptively casual, the tone light, but his breath brushes her ear and she hears the tremors that nobody else would notice and recognition floods through her.

She chokes off a gasp. Her hand tightens.

He can't stop looking at her. She is doing her very best to keep up the façade of them not knowing each other, eyes front. But he can't keep his off her now. This close, almost leaning over her left shoulder, he can peek round her hair. Her skin is slightly darker after all this time in a place that actually sees sunshine, only slightly. All her features just the same. Her hair a little longer than the last time. He hasn't seen these clothes before and it's only now that he realises that he knew every outfit she wore to work; couldn't pin-point exactly when a new one appeared, but he recalls the odd gnawing sense that something was different. He sees her cheekbones lift, her jaw move. She is trying not to smile. He can't help the sigh that escapes him, is thrilled when her chest lifts and she tightens her lips in response.

'Do you really think so?' she asks without raising her head.

She is doing this so much better than him and he isn't making it easy for her. He would try, but he finds he just doesn't give a damn. Not now he sees her, hears her, now they are this close.

'It's possible.'

His voice is smooth but drops dangerously soft. She turns towards him slowly. He looks down at the top of her head. She won't look at him and that might hurt if it weren't for the tenderness that is already squeezing his heart. He has to close his eyes. The smell of her hair is exactly the same. They could be anywhere. They could be any time. This could be any of those chances he never took.

She turns, and she knows she shouldn't but she does it anyway. His suit is very crumpled actually but his shirt is sharp and clean. She fights the urge to put her hands inside his jacket, her arms around his chest, to lean into his body and breathe him and feel him. Real. Solid. Here.

Instead, she worries at the orange, fingernails digging into the skin. Something to hold on to, to keep a hold on herself.

His hands look like his hands always have. He is wearing sandals. She can see his toes. She has never seen his toes before. It feels far too intimate for a public square. This is all too intimate for a public square, in fact. She should go. They should stop this.

But he had said... possible. What could be possible between them?

'I know this must seem very forward, Miss...' He has got a grip on his voice again, or at least remembered his lines, from some old script. 'But would you care to take a walk?'

She holds her breath. Tells herself should. Tells herself no. Reminds herself of all the rules and what they are there for.

Then she raises her head and meets his eye.

Her eyes are green green green and so open. There is so much he has to tell her.

His face is soft. He is a little hopeful, a little scared, the way she has seen him so many times before. But this time he is looking at her.

'Yes. I'd like that.'


End file.
